Data centers are facilities that house numerous computer systems arranged in the form of electronics racks. Typically, a data center houses on the order of a few thousand electronic racks. Each computer system in a rack may include one or more processors, memory devices, controllers, power converters and manipulators, and other such electronic components, which perform different operations and dissipate varying amounts of heat. Moreover, depending upon the state of operation, a computer system may dissipate on the order of few hundred Watts to a few thousand Watts. Therefore, a significant amount of cooling is required to keep the electronic components within an optimum operating temperature range (typically, 75° C.-85° C.). According to the 2007 Report to Congress on Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency, in 2005, server driven power usage amounted to 1.2% of total US energy consumption. Over the past six years, energy use by these centers and their supporting infrastructure is estimated to have increased by nearly 100 percent (US DoE Information and Communications Technology Roadmap). Recent studies have shown the cooling energy to be 25%-40% of the total data center energy.
Conventional computer systems are designed so as to have the micro-processors, the memory modules, and the hard drives in close proximity. As each electronic component dissipates a different amount of heat, and the different components are present in close proximity to each other, the cooling solution is generally designed to cool the limiting component.